Balsa 1.0: Mail in the GNOME Environment - page 3

An Update

Though Balsa is stable and ready for use as a general purpose mail
client, there are still a few features in the wings. The most
important is likely to be robust filtering.

It looks as if the Balsa filter feature, for instance, will provide a
flexible set of tools for GUI configuration. Filtering can be
compiled in with a configure switch, but the current filter
configuration tool appears to be a non-functioning mock-up in the 1.0
release.

When it's done, Balsa filtering will allow for not only simple
matches, but more complex regular expressions. A variety of actions
will be allowed as well, including running specific programs, playing
sounds, dumping messages into the trash, copying/moving messages to
specific folders, or printing them directly. Filters will also be
configurable to react to incoming, or outgoing mail, or being run on
demand.

In the meantime, Balsa plays very nicely with existing mail filter
setups the user may have already implemented. I used it for a week
simply pointing it at the directory where procmail sorts all my
messages into mbox files and had no complaints at all. Procmail and
Balsa work well together, especially if Balsa is set to automatically
update each mail box on launch and at a set interval.

Balsa's a good, basic GUI client. It's biggest strengths are its ease
of use and how well it integrates with GNOME on the whole. The lack of
native filtering is a shortcoming it's impossible to ignore, but it
looks like the infrastructure is in place to handle this task.
Meanwhile, the program's very stable and very usable. If you're
looking for a basic GNOME mailer, Balsa's for you.